Diocese of Chelmsford Weekly Sermon: The Trinitarian Grace

 

The Weekly Sermons for the Diocese of Chelmsford are written and recorded by clergy and lay ministers for people who want to watch online or for ministers looking for sermon ideas. To have the latest weekly sermon delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up to the mailing list here.

I have recorded this week's sermon, which is entitled 'The Trinitarian Grace':

“The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” It is common practise in church meetings for those present to close the meeting by saying the grace out loud, and to each other. (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/) John Wesley wrote of this prayer, “Let us study it more and more, that we may value it proportionably; that we may either deliver or receive it with a becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.” (https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/famous_prayers/may_the_grace.html)  

I would like us to do what John Wesley commends and study the Grace more and more today by reflecting together on the amazing grace of Jesus, the extravagant love of God, and the intimate communion of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s begin by thinking about where this prayer comes from. “It comes right at the end of a letter, or letters probably, that Paul wrote to a church he founded, but a church that had turned on him.” “It’s clear when you read between the lines that Paul had been getting the first century equivalent of on-line abuse, that this church that he had set up had been getting at him for being too poor, too scruffy, for working with his hands, for not having the right qualifications.” He’s under attack and has to defend himself but, “at the end of this long, passionate, sometimes weary and difficult correspondence”, he “writes these simple and ageless words, ‘The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.’”

So, “These are not just pious, empty, words. He is saying them to people who have criticised him, hated him, attacked him, and abused him. He is wishing the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, upon those who cast him as an enemy. He says, in a way, it doesn’t matter what you say about me or what you think of me. Your abuse and attack isn’t going to make me anything different from the person I am determined to be; a person shaped by God’s grace, living God’s love, seeking fellowship, friendship, community with anyone.”

The effect of the Grace here is “to offer us the full resources of the faith”: “When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he and they were both aware that they were doing and enduring some pretty terrible things. But Paul told them that God wanted to give them the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That is what God wants to do with all of us – to bless us with the gifts of the beautiful Trinity and to show us what human life – touched by such blessing – could really be like.” (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/)  

Let’s now look briefly at the individual parts of this prayer, beginning with amazing grace. U2’s song called ‘Grace’ defines the amazing grace of Jesus as follows: Grace “takes the blame”, “covers the shame” and “removes the stain”. “What once was hurt / What once was friction / What left a mark / No longer stings / Because Grace makes beauty / Out of ugly things / Grace finds beauty / In everything / Grace finds goodness in everything.” (https://www.u2.com/lyrics/53)  

Jesus told a story about a son who squandered his father's inheritance (the parable of the prodigal son). When the son returns, rather than rejecting or disciplining him, the father runs to greet him and celebrates his return. That story gives us an insight into the kind of love that God gives. Grace is the unmerited favour of God which finds goodness in everything. We do not deserve the love and goodness that is freely and unconditionally given from heaven and all we can or need do is receive it. That is truly amazing grace.

When we understand grace in this way, we can see why God’s love is described as extravagant. There is no holding back in the economy of God’s love, the currency of the kingdom of God is of abundant generosity of things that never run out. Sam Wells suggests that:

“The secret of happiness is learning to love the things God gives us in plenty. There’s no global shortage of friendship, kindness, generosity, sympathy, creativity, faithfulness, laughter, love. These are the currency of abundance.

The Church of today needs to rediscover this teaching because God gives us the abundance of the kingdom to renew the poverty of the church. In our generation God has given his Church a financial crisis, and this can only be for one reason: to teach us that abundance does not lie in financial security, and to show us that only in relationships of mutual interdependence, relationships that money obscures as often as it enables, does abundant life lie.”

As John McKnight and Peter Block have noted in their book ‘The Abundant Community’, we live in a consumer society which is an economy of scarcity because it “constantly tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside of our immediate community.” Instead, they argue that “we can do unbelievable things by starting with our assets, not our deficits. We all have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. Using our particular assets (our skills, experience, insights and ideas) we have the God-given power to create a hope-filled life and can be the architects of the future where we want to live.” Finding ways to thrive in our churches and communities by releasing the gifts of all and building on one another’s assets is a sign of the extravagant love of God.

Finally, we come to the intimate communion of the Holy Spirit. Sam Wells and Abigail Kocher have noted “the subtlety of the word ‘communion’: com means with and union means in – we are at the same time with God and in God, which combines our two heavenly aspirations.” (https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/keeping-the-feast/)

In communion God takes our lives into the Godhead, the Trinity, and blesses us. In a Communion Service that happens particularly when the bread and wine and money and prayers are brought to the altar: “In that moment we each bring our different qualities, resources, hopes and dreams to God. And then the pastor recalls the sacred story of how God took what we are and made it what he is. And in that transformation we each receive back the same. What this is depicting is a new society in which we each bring our differentness to God but we each receive back from God the same bread of life. We each have different hungers, but God satisfies them all.

And in this dynamic of transformation we see how salvation works. God takes a simple people and their simple offerings and gives them a sacred story and sacred actions and in the regular telling of that story and performance of those actions they are transformed into God’s holy people. And that’s exactly what the regular celebration of the Eucharist is about: God taking an ordinary people and through this story and these actions turning them into the body of Christ, God’s companions forever.” (https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/sermons/Sept20TeachingEucharist-1.pdf)

As we have been exploring grace, love and communion, notice that the Son, the Father and Holy Spirit are all involved all the time. It’s not that Jesus is the only expression of grace or the Father, the only expression of love. All three are one, so they are all involved in showing and sharing grace, love and communion. We are drawn in to the relationship of love at the heart of the Godhead where grace, love and communion are constantly being shared and exchanged between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is out of this relationship of love that Jesus comes into our world to be with us and thereby open up a way for us to participate in the relationship of love that is constantly being shared between Father, Son and Spirit.

So, this wonderful prayer - “The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” – is not simply for the ending of meetings but for the whole of life and the whole of eternity. It is what Christianity is all about. It is a description of the Trinity and the love that exists at the heart of all things because it exists at the heart of God. And it is an invitation for us to become part of that love and participate in it. So, let us, as John Wesley commends, “receive it with a becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.” Amen.

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Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty.

We can do nothing without Jesus

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Andrew's Wickford: 

Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.” (John 5. 17-30)

“God wants to communicate with humanity, and … Jesus represents the essence of that desire to talk,” says Mike Riddell. As God’s Son, Jesus was in a constant conversation with both God the Father and with God the Spirit. In these verses and others, the Son claims that he hears from the Father and speaks just what the Father has taught him (John 8: 26 – 29). He also claims that his relationship with the Father is not just one way, rather the Father also always hears the Son (John 11: 41 & 42). Similarly, he says that the Spirit will not speak on his own but only what he hears (John 16: 13). The Spirit is sent, like the Son, by the Father, but comes in the name of the Son to remind the disciples of everything that the Son said to them (John 14: 26 & 27). This interplay or dialogue within the Godhead between Father, Son and Spirit can be summed up in the words of John 3. 34-35: “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God; to him God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”

Stephen Verney calls this interplay between Father, Son and Spirit, which he believes we are called to enter, ‘the Dance of Love.’ He writes: “”I can do nothing”, [Jesus] said, “except what I see the Father doing”. If he lays aside his teaching robes and washes the feet of the learners … it is because he sees his Father doing it. God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, is like that; he too lays aside his dignity and status as a teacher. He does not try to force his objective truth into our thick heads, but he gives himself to us in acts of humble service; he laughs with us and weeps with us, and he invites us to know him in our hearts through an interaction and an interplay between us. It is this knowledge that Jesus has received from the Father, and in the to and fro of this relationship he and the Father are one. They need each other. That is the pattern of how things potentially are in the universe, and of how God means them to be”.

Just as Jesus does nothing on his own but does everything together with the Father and the Spirit, it is to be the same for us. Jesus told his disciples that he was going to leave them (as happened at the Ascension) and then that he would send the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the comforter and advocate, to them (as happened on the Day of Pentecost). The Spirit speaks to the disciples whatever he hears from Jesus; both the many things he wanted to say to them but which they could not bear at that time and also the things that are to come. Earlier, he also said that the Spirit will teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them. The result will be that they will do greater things than him.

Jesus said many amazing things that people still repeat regardless of whether they follow him or not. But his farewell discourse to his disciples must be among the most amazing, because in it Jesus says that those who follow him will do greater things than him and will be led into all truth. When you think how amazing Jesus’ own actions were, it is hard to imagine how people like us could do greater things than that, and, when you think how profound his teaching was, how could we be led into deeper or greater truth than that?

But Jesus was articulating something that all good teachers think and feel; the sense that all the time he had spent with them and invested in them was not so they would be clones of him, simply repeating the things he did and said, but instead that he had equipped, empowered and enabled his followers to follow him by using their own gifts and abilities and initiative which would inevitably mean that they would do and say different things from him but still with his Spirit and based on all they had learnt from him. He was saying that each one of us is a unique combination of personality, abilities and potential and, therefore, each of us can make a unique mark on the world. His followers can do greater things than Jesus because they will do different things from him in his name and Spirit – things that only they can do for him because they are that unique package of personality, ability and potential.

As Jesus put it, the Spirit will teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus said so that we intuitively do those things on an improvisational basis. The Spirit comes to remind Christians of all that Jesus did and said, so we embody it in our lives. In this way we can do greater things than Jesus because we will do different things from him, but in his name and Spirit. Like him, we can do nothing on our own, but only what we, through his Spirit, see Jesus doing. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Inner City - Unity.

God so loved that he gave

Here's the sermon on John 3. 1 – 21 that I shared at St Mary’s Runwell and St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

God so loved - love is from God because God is love; pure love, the essence of all that love is and can be. Love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love that does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love that never ends.

God so loved the world - the heavens and the earth that God created in the beginning, the heavens which declare the glory of God and the sky that displays what his hands have made, humankind that God created in his own image. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. God so loved he world that he created in the beginning.

God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. Our love is often less than this. We speak of those we love as being everything we need or as soul mates who complete us, but rarely talk in terms of giving all we have to others. Yet that is the nature of God’s love, he gives all he has to us.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son – the Father gives us his Son and the Son gives his life, his whole life, even unto death. Yet, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, this is a way of saying that what God gives to us is himself, everything he has and is. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – God gives himself to us in order that we can become part of him and enter the very life of God himself. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Eternal life is the life of love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share within the Godhead and in to which we are called to come and share by the ever-giving love that God the Father shows to us through God the Son.

God’s love has been revealed among us in this way, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. We live in the light of this love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. God so loved the world that he gave. How do we unwrap the gifts he has given?

God gave us the world in which we live, including the life that we enjoy now and the life that we will enjoy into eternity. One of the ways in which we unwrap those gifts is by means of appreciation. Taking a break to get outside and enjoy God’s creation or counting our blessings by beginning a list of all the things we’re grateful to God for including all areas of our lives - family, work, sport, food, sleep etc.

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Jesus is God’s greatest gift to us. We unwrap the gift of Jesus as we admit to our need for salvation and change. We receive Jesus through the gift of his Spirit, who enables us to change by focusing our thoughts and lives on Jesus. At every moment of every day, we can ask ourselves ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and allow the Spirit to answer that question by guiding our actions and words.

To support us in living as followers of Christ we have been given the gifts of the Bible (with its story of God’s dealings with the world he created and of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for that same world), prayer (which brings us into conversation with God), the Church (the group of people locally who are seeking to go deeper into God and, together, to reveal God to their local community), and the gifts of the Spirit (talents and abilities given, not personal benefit, but for the benefit of others).

These are among God’s greatest gifts to us for which we should be truly grateful. We are used to the idea of saying grace (thank you) before enjoying the food we eat. In the same way, we could say grace before reading the Bible, conversing with God in prayer, coming to church, and using the gifts of the Spirit which have been given to us.

Lewis Hyde writes that ‘a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift’ and ‘the spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.’ Leo Buscaglia said, 'Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.’ St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12 that ‘the Spirit's presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.’ He follows his chapter on the gifts of the Spirit by sharing, in 1 Corinthians 13, the best way of all; that of love. God so loved the world that he gave; as God’s children and followers of Jesus, we too are to love the world by giving.

In Lent, as we reflect on all that Jesus has given for us and to us, it is also helpful to reflect on all that we can give back to God in thanks for his overwhelming generosity. Stewardship is about the ongoing contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.

We live in the light of Jesus’ love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. In Lent, particularly, we come into the light of Christ by comparing our lives to his. As we do so, inevitably we find that we fall short; that our capacity to do what pleases him (by living out goodness, righteousness and truth) is less than his capacity for these things. Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we are challenged to become generous in the way that God is generous towards us.

God is love. Love is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave life, bringing the world into being.
Life is gift. The world is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave his one and only Son.
Of his own free will the Son
gave up all he had
and walked the path of obedience
all the way to death -
his death on the cross -
that we might have the gift of life.
Life is gift and giving.
Life without giving
cannot be living.
God so loved that he gave.
Love is unmerited gift,
to be given freely, willingly,
without expectation.
We do not love to be loved;
we love to love.
Love is the gift.
God so loved that he gave.
Love grows by giving.
The love we give away
is the only love we keep.
God so loved that he gave.

As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. As God’s love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. May we use the opportunity of this Lent to reflect together on the love that God gives to us to also reflect on the contributions we make as Christian disciples, thinking about the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contributions we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take. Amen.

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Victoria Williams - Love.

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love & Bible and Art Daily

This Autumn, the Visual Commentary on Scripture launched Bible and Art Daily, a new daily email exploring the Bible through art. Through concise but vivid day-by-day encounters, it takes you on a series of journeys through the world of Scripture and the history of art. The VCS have spent the last year bringing together experts in theology and art history to carefully curate a treasury of week-long series, each exploring a particular theme, an artistic medium, or a biblical character. Find out more and subscribe here.

Two of the commentaries I have written for the VCS have featured in a Bible and Art Daily episode so far. The first, 'Yet To Come', featured in the series on 'Picturing the Trinity'. This commentart comes from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith' which explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Picturing the Trinity' is described as follows: 'There are perils and peculiarities involved in visually depicting the Holy Trinity. Christianity insists that divinity is invisible, even if Jesus in his humanity reveals God’s purposes and presence. And the Bible’s multiplicity of images of what God might be ‘like’ forbid settling on any one as descriptively adequate. Some visual art has risked anthropomorphizing God; some has experimented with oblique or abstract modes of signification, recognizing that God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom [no one] has ever seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16).'

The second commentary used that I have written has been included in the Series 'Trees of Life'. Episode 7 of 14: 'The Ground of Rebirth' has artwork by Arthur Boyd from my 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4. The image included is 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree'. The 'Trees of Life' Series is described as follows: 'The Christian story of salvation begins and ends with trees. The forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, once eaten, initiates a long pilgrimage through time, which will culminate in a heavenly city with a tree at its heart, whose leaves are ‘for the healing of the nations’.'

This year, the Advent programme from the VCS has had a slightly different look than those from previous years. Instead of daily emails for the duration of Advent, they have sent their Exhibition of the Week subscribers an email every Monday from December 1st, with links to seven different works of art and commentaries for each day of the week. The idea is to think of it as a traditional Advent calendar! Each of the four weeks has had a different theme, starting with Hope, then Peace, followed by Joy, and ending with Love in the week of Christmas.

Anyone subscribed to their Exhibition of the Week receives the weekly Advent emails. Their hope has been that we enjoy journeying towards Christmas with the help of these works of art. Sign up here for their Exhibition of the Week email.

The first week's commentaries included 'To Our Hopes', another of the commentaries from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith'. The most recent email reveals that the image chosen for Christmas Day is from my most recent exhibition for VCS.  Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, the exhibition is called 'Establishing the Heart' and includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer. The image chosen for Christmas Day is John Reilly's 'Holy Family'.

John Reilly’s ambition was "always been to paint a picture which perfectly weds form and content” in order “to express in visible form the oneness and unity of [the] invisible power binding all things into one whole.” I was fortunate enough to meet him at his home on the Isle of Wight, while there on a family holiday. I didn’t know of his work before going on that holiday but found cards and prints of his amazing work in some of the shops there and had to find out more. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me his work and works in progress.

He has said: "My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”

So, for Reilly, the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”. He has also used the greater freedom of expression that modern movements in art have given to artists to develop a visual language of forms and colours which he hopes expresses “something of their deeper spiritual significance.” His work draws on cubism, fauvism and orphism in particular.

Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and the life that God has created. He frequently bases his works on a central circle (often, the sun) from which facets of colour emanate, like ripples on the surface of a stream. The painting’s imagery is then set within these facets, each figure or object being embedded in the overall patterning of the painting and related to the environmental whole that Reilly creates.

By these means fragments of form and colour (the facets of the painting’s patterning) and the images that they contain are united to circle harmoniously around and within God, the central life and intelligence which is the light of the world. Works such as ‘Life Eternal’ utilise these methods and meanings and both contain and convey huge energy and resolution as a result.

His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings (including 'Life Eternal’) therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.

The obituary I wrote for Reilly and my review of 'The Painted Word: Paintings by John Reilly' can both be found in the 'Church Times' Digital Archive.  

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

My exhibitions for the VCS are:

'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Fishers of People' which uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

'Before the Deluge', a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, 'Establishing the Heart' includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer.

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Arvo Pärt - Christmas Lullaby.

The prayer of transfiguration

Here's the sermon that I shared during today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford: 

The dictionary definition of transfiguration is: a change in form or appearance or an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change. Those aspects of transfiguration can be seen in our Gospel reading (Luke 9.28-36), but the story defines the word best.

Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, puts it like this: “There’s glory – the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ. There’s the pattern of God’s story in Israel and the church, a story that finds its most poignant moments in the midst of suffering and exile. There’s the loving, tender, presence and heavenly voice of God the Father – a voice that for the only time in their lives, the disciples hear and understand. And there’s the extraordinary realisation that, even though all this could have gone on without them, the disciples have been caught up in the life of the Trinity, the mystery of salvation, the unfolding of God’s heart, the beauty of holiness.”

The way he describes it, transfiguration involves the glory of seeing a person or event in the bigger story of God’s loving purposes for the world. Up until this point, “the disciples know Jesus does plenty of amazing and wonderful things and says many beautiful and true things, but they still assume he’s basically the same as them.” It’s only as they go up the mountain with him that the veil slips and they’re invited in to a whole other world. A world in which “Jesus is completely at home,” “even when the Father’s voice thunders from above.” “And more remarkably still, it seems there’s a place for them in it, hanging out with the likes of Moses and Elijah. They’ve been given a glimpse of glory. It’s a glory that’s faithful to the story of Israel, a glory that has Jesus at the centre of it, a glory that has God speaking words of love, a glory that has a place for them in it, however stumbling and clumsy they are, and finally a glory in which Jesus touches them tenderly in their fear.“

Sam Wells suggests that this experience, this glimpse of glory, can shape the way we pray by giving our prayers the same extra dimension. In fact, he details three different ways to pray. The first involves Resurrection. “Resurrection prayer is a prayer calling for a miracle. It is prayer of faithful risk. We look to the heavens with tightened fist and say, ‘Sweet Jesus, if you’re alive, make your presence known!’”

The second way to pray is Incarnation. This is “a prayer of presence. It is, perhaps, more silent than a prayer of Resurrection. It is a prayer which recognizes that, yes, Jesus was raised, but that it happened through brokenness. Through Christ, God shares our pain and our frailty. So we pray acknowledging that God suffers with us.”

The third way to pray is Transfiguration. Sam writes, “God, in your son’s transfiguration we see a whole reality within and beneath and beyond what we thought we understood; in … times of bewilderment and confusion, show … father your glory, that [we] may find a deeper truth to … life than [we] ever knew, make firmer friends than [we] ever had, discover reasons for living beyond what [we’d] ever imagined, and be folded into your grace like never before.” “In other words, it is a prayer that, in whatever circumstance, asks God to reshape our reality, to give us a new and right spirit to trust that even in the midst of suffering and hardship, truth can still be experienced and shared.”

“On the mountain, the disciples discovered that Christ was part of a conversation with Israel and God and was dwelling in glory in a way that they had no idea of and could hardly grasp and yet it put everything on a different plane.”

As a result, the prayer of Transfiguration is a different kind of a prayer. “The prayer of resurrection has a certain defiance about it – in the face of what seem to be all the known facts, it calls on God to produce the goods and turn the situation round. It has courage and hope but there’s always that fear that it has a bit of fantasy as well. The prayer of incarnation is honest and unflinching about the present and the future, but you could say it’s a little too much swathed in tragedy … it’s so concerned to face … reality … that there’s always that fear that it’s never going to discover the glory of what lies above.”

The prayer of Transfiguration is different. “Not so much, ‘Fix this and take it off my desk!’ Nor even, ‘Be with me and share in my struggle, now and always.’ But something more like, ‘Make this trial and tragedy, this problem and pain, a glimpse of your glory, a window into your world, when I can see your face, sense the mystery in all things, and walk with angels and saints. Bring me closer to you in this crisis than I ever have been in calmer times. Make this a moment of truth, and when I cower in fear and feel alone, touch me, raise me, and make me alive like never before.’”

Maybe you would like to make the prayer of transfiguration your prayer for yourself at this time, “in the midst of whatever it is you’re wrestling with today.”

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John David - Closer To Thee.

That the world may believe

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

“They love every one, but are persecuted by all … Their names are blackened and yet they are cleared. They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life.”

That is how Christians were described in the Letter to Diognetus which may have been written in the second century. Tertullian, one of the leaders in the early Church, in his 2nd century defense of Christians remarks how Christian love attracted pagan notice: "What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. 'Only look' they say, 'look how they love one another'" (Apology 39).

This is what Jesus anticipated when he prayed that his disciples would be completely one in order that the world may know that he was sent by God the Father and they are loved by the Father just as Jesus is loved by the Father (John 17.18-23). As Lesslie Newbigin has written “this manifest unity in the one name will challenge the world to recognise that the name of Jesus is not the name of “one of the prophets” but the name of the one sent by the Father to whom all that belongs to the Father has been given.” The sign to the world that Jesus is who he claimed to be is to be, and has actually been at times in the past, the love and unity of the Church.

Therefore, the lack of unity, as expressed in the way discussions are conducted, that is currently found within the Church of England and within the Anglican Communion over issues of sexuality deeply grieves God and has a profound effect on the Church’s ability to witness to the truth of Jesus. It also reveals the extent to which we have not fully understood or received the love of the Father and the Son. It is not that difficult debates cannot go on - they absolutely should - but we need to have such discussions without impacting our unity.  

Jesus’ prayer is that the love which the Father has for the Son will also be in his disciples. It is as we know that love in our lives that we are able to love and be united with the wider Church. The Church is based not on our natural liking of each other instead the Church is based on our being caught up into the love relationship that exists between Father and Son and knowing both ourselves and each other to be loved in precisely the same way.

Richard Burridge has written that, “such unity is rooted in the life of God: ‘as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.’ Jesus answered Philip’s desire to see the Father with ‘I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ This unity between the Father and the Son is to be shared through the indwelling of the Spirit with all who love him. Thus the command to ‘love one another’ is ‘new’, because it is no mere moral exhortation, but a sharing in the life of God, ‘as I have loved you’.

Stephen Verney has called this love relationship between the Father and the Son, the dance of love. He describes it like this:

“The Son can do nothing of himself”, [Jesus] says, “but only what he sees the Father doing” … He looks, and what he sees the Father doing, that he does; he listens, and what he hears the Father saying, that he says. The other side of the equation – of the choreography – is the generosity of the Father. “The Father loves the Son, and reveals to him everything which he is doing”, and furthermore, he gives him authority to do “out of himself” all that the Father does, and can never cease to do because it flows “out of himself”. In that dance of love between them, says Jesus, “I and the Father are one.” The Son cries “Abba! Father!” and the Father cries “my beloved Son”, and the love which leaps between them is Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God, God himself, for God is Spirit and God is Love.”

We become part of the love relationship when we become Christians as Burridge reminded us; to love one another is no mere moral exhortation but a sharing in the life of God. So that is the question for us tonight, and for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion at this moment in its life and history, to what extent are we actually sharing in the life of God? To what extent are we participating in the love that exists between God the Father and God the Son? If we are, then both our words and actions towards our fellow Christians will be words and actions of love leading to unity? If we are not, then the reverse will be true.

So, can we today regret our failure to participate more fully in the love that exists between the Father and the Son? Will we today ask to participate more fully in that love? Our answers are vital, not merely for ourselves, but for the witness of the Church to Christ. “Jesus brings together the unity he has with the Father and the love of the disciples for one another – but it is not just to generate warm feelings of togetherness. The purpose is for the continuing mission, ‘that the world may believe that you have sent me’. The world, Burridge writes, does not naturally ponder the internal relationships of the Holy Trinity, but when it sees Christians living this self-sacrificial love then it is challenged to think again. As were the writer of the Letter to Diognetus and those of whom Tertullian wrote:

“They love every one, but are persecuted by all … Their names are blackened and yet they are cleared. They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life.”

"What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. 'Only look' they say, 'look how they love one another'".

May it be so for us. Amen.

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Eternal Ruler Of The Ceaseless Round.

God so loved that he gave

Here's the Stewardship sermon based on John 3. 16 – 21 that I shared this morning at St Andrew’s Wickford:

God so loved - love is from God because God is love; pure love, the essence of all that love is and can be. Love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love that does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love that never ends.

God so loved the world - the heavens and the earth that God created in the beginning, the heavens which declare the glory of God and the sky that displays what his hands have made, humankind that God created in his own image. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. God so loved he world that he created in the beginning.

God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. Our love is often less than this. We speak of those we love as being everything we need or as soul mates who complete us, but rarely talk in terms of giving all we have to others. Yet that is the nature of God’s love, he gives all he has to us.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son – the Father gives us his Son and the Son gives his life, his whole life, even unto death. Yet, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, this is a way of saying that what God gives to us is himself, everything he has and is. 

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – God gives himself to us in order that we can become part of him and enter the very life of God himself. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Eternal life is the life of love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share within the Godhead and in to which we are called to come and share by the ever-giving love that God the Father shows to us through God the Son.

God’s love has been revealed among us in this way, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. We live in the light of this love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same.

Stewardship month is an annual reminder to us that that is so when it comes to the contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.

Our Parish needs a whole series of small contributions at present as we need new volunteers across the whole range of our ministry. We are looking for a new PCC Treasurer, members of our District Church Councils (the DCCs) and Parochial Church Council (our PCC). We would value new members of our choir and people who could work with children when they come to our services. We always value help with administration, pastoral visiting, prayer ministry and with our publicity (website, social media etc). The packs that you have been given include more information about Stewardship and response forms to help you think more about the ways you give currently and what might be possible in the future. The packs include a form you can fill in to offer your help.

When it comes to our financial giving, we have faced significant challenges as for a long time we haven’t been able to give the Diocese the Parish Share that is needed to cover the cost of clergy and the other support that the Diocese provides. We are gradually increasing the amount we give to the Diocese for our support year-on—year. However, we need to maintain and improve that situation this year, so ask that you reconsider your giving at this time and use Stewardship Month to decide what you can contribute to St Andrew’s and our Parish in future. There are forms in the Pack which can be used if you want to start giving or if you are able to change what you are giving.

God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. May we use the opportunity that Stewardship month provides to reflect together on the contribution we make as Christian disciples; through the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take. Amen.

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Extreme - Everything Under The Sun: Rise 'N Shine / Am I Ever Gonna Change / Who Cares?

Conversation as communion

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

In the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke - Jesus is portrayed as a teller of pithy and pointed stories but in John’s Gospel this is not the case and, instead, Jesus is portrayed as engaging in conversation with those around. Nathanael, Mary, the mother of Jesus, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the crowds of Jews and their leaders, Mary and Martha, and Pilate are all examples of people who are recorded as having significant conversations with Jesus.

Like them, the writer of this Gospel has entered into conversation with God himself and has entered “into the maturity and fullness of the Lord’s Prayer as a dialogue between Father and Son” learning to listen as well as to speak, “as Jesus listened to the Father and offered himself to bring to carry out the secret purpose which the Father could not bring to fruition without him”. For him, as for Jesus, self-consciousness has become prayer – a conversation with God. It is this same conversation into which he, following Jesus, wishes to draw us.

Jesus as God’s Son is in conversation with both God the Father and with God the Spirit. Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.” (John 5. 17-30)

The Son claims that he hears from the Father and speaks just what the Father has taught him (John 8: 26 – 29). He also claims that his relationship with the Father is not just one way, rather the Father also always hears the Son (John 11: 41 & 42). Similarly, he says that the Spirit will not speak on his own but only what he hears (John 16: 13). The Spirit is sent, like the Son, by the Father, but comes in the name of the Son to remind the disciples of everything that the Son said to them (John 14: 26 & 27). This interplay or dialogue within the Godhead between Father, Son and Spirit can be summed up in the words of John 3. 34-35: “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God; to him God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”

John’s Gospel dramatises for us the extent to which Jesus was in the conversation with God and to which this conversation was Jesus. Conversation here is essentially another word for communion: “God is no more than what the Father, Son and Spirit give to and receive from each other in the inseparable communion that is the outcome of their love. Communion is the meaning of the word: there is no ‘being’ of God other than this dynamic of persons in relation”.

Stephen Verney called this the ‘Dance of Love’, the interplay between the Father, the Spirit and Jesus into which we are invited to enter: “”I can do nothing”, [Jesus] said, “except what I see the Father doing”. If he lays aside his teaching robes and washes the feet of the learners … it is because he sees his Father doing it. God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, is like that; he too lays aside his dignity and status as a teacher. He does not try to force his objective truth into our thick heads, but he gives himself to us in acts of humble service; he laughs with us and weeps with us, and he invites us to know him in our hearts through an interaction and an interplay between us. It is this knowledge that Jesus has received from the Father, and in the to and fro of this relationship he and the Father are one. They need each other. That is the pattern of how things potentially are in the universe, and of how God means them to be”.

In saying that we are called to enter in to this interplay within and between the Trinity, Verney is saying that we are called to join the conversation between Father, Son and Spirit. It is this that we see happening in John’s Gospel as Nathanael, Mary, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the crowds of Jews and their leaders, the disciples, Mary and Martha, and Pilate among others are all drawn into the conversation within the Godhead.

God wants us to be in conversation, in dialogue, in debate, with him so that we can find him for ourselves, find ourselves in him, and embody his characteristics and interests in ourselves. The philosopher, Martin Buber, has argued that “God is not met by turning away from the world or by making God into an object of contemplation, a “being” whose existence can be proved and whose attributes can be demonstrated.” Instead, we can know God only in dialogue with him and this dialogue goes on moment by moment in each new situation as we respond with our whole being to the unforeseen and the unique.

Our dialogue with God interrogates the very nature of what we are, and how we understand our identity, as it is from the art of conversation that truth emerges and our identity is constructed. It is through this conversation that the Father loves us, showing us all that he is doing. Truth emerging and identity constructed are the greater works which he shows to us through this conversation and which astonish us. Amen.

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The Innocence Mission - Every Hour Here.

Living and loving in Truth

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary's Runwell and St Nicholas Laindon this morning;

Last year was the twentieth anniversary of my ordination. I can still remember well the beginning of my training for ordination and the circumstances, changes and feelings involved for me and my family in the challenges of that new beginning. For me, my ministerial studies involved exploring my faith more deeply through theological study and responding to the challenge of exploring many different understandings of what ordained ministry would involve. I had fears about the impact that my change of vocation would have on my family, as they began to experience what life as a clergy family was going to involve. I was also unsure about the extent to which I could meet the expectations that others might place on me once I put on ‘the collar’.

Our Gospel reading (John 17.6-19) takes us into a similar period of change for Jesus’ disciples. Our reading is part of the prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples on the night before he died and it is a prayer about vocation for those disciples. Chronologically this prayer comes before Jesus’ Ascension, but, in terms of its content, it is a post-Ascension prayer because Jesus’ concern is for his disciples once he has left them. Many of his disciples had been on the road with him for three years and had sat at his feet as disciples listening to his teaching, observing his example and imbibing his spirit. Following his Ascension, he would leave them and they would have the challenge of continuing his ministry without him there. He knew that that experience would be challenging and therefore he prayed for them to be supported and strengthened in the challenges they would face.

I want us to reflect today on three aspects of the section of Jesus’ prayer that we have as today’s Gospel reading. The three aspects are unity, protection and sanctification; but before considering those things, I want us to note that the prayer which Jesus began on earth continues in eternity. In Hebrews 7:25 we read that Jesus ‘always lives to make intercession’ for us and, in Romans 8:34, St Paul writes: ‘Christ Jesus … is at the right hand of God [and] intercedes for us.’ Many of us will have experienced the benefit, particularly in times of stress and trial, of knowing that others are praying for us and that we are, therefore, regularly on their minds and in their hearts. These verses assure us that we are constantly and eternally on the mind and heart of God and Jesus is consistently sending his love to us in the form of his prayers. That reality underpins this prayer and can be a source of strength and comfort to us, particularly when times are tough.

What Jesus prays in today’s Gospel reading, he continues to pray in eternity, so let’s think now about the first aspect of Jesus’ prayer for us, which is unity. Jesus prays that his disciples may be one, as he is one with God the Father and God the Spirit. In other words, we have to understand the unity that is the Godhead, before we can understand the unity that Jesus wants for his disciples. As God is one and also three persons at one and the same time, there is a community at the heart of God with a constant exchange of love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. That exchange is the very heartbeat of God and is the reason we are able to say that God is love. Everything that God is and does and says is the overflow of the exchange of love that is at the heart of the Godhead. Jesus invites us to enter into that relationship of love and to experience it for ourselves. That is his prayer, his teaching and also the purpose of his incarnation, death and resurrection. 

Jesus gave the command that we should love one another as we have been loved by God. It is in the sharing of love with each other that we experience unity and experience God. Unity, then, does not come from beliefs or propositions. It is not to do with statements or articles of faith. It does not involve us thinking or believing the same thing. Instead, unity is found in relationship, in the constant, continuing exchange of love with others within community; meaning that unity is actually found in diversity. Jesus prays that we will have that experience firstly by coming into relationship with a relational God and secondly by allowing the love that is at the heart of the Godhead to fill us and overflow from us to others, whilst also receiving the overflow of that love from others.

The second aspect of Jesus’ prayer is his prayer for our protection. Our need for protection is often physical and immediate. That is certainly the case for those caught up in conflict around our world currently. Their need to be protected is one that can be met by ceasefires, provision of aid and then home building, underpinned by prayer. Similarly, church communities can provide tangible protection. I remember hearing a guest of the Sunday International Group at St Martin-in-the-Fields say that that church had been a ‘shelter from the stormy blast’ for him. In his prayer Jesus asks that we will be protected in a different way, by being protected in God’s name. Jesus said that God’s name had been given to him and that he had then given that name to his disciples.

In our day, we have lost much of the depth and richness that names held in more ancient cultures. Names in Jesus’ culture and earlier were signs or indicators of the essence of the thing named. When we read the story of Adam naming the animals in the Book of Genesis that is what was going on; Adam was identifying the distinctive essence of each creature brought before him and seeking a word to capture and articulate that essential characteristic. It is also why the name of God is so special in Judaism – so special that it cannot be spoken – as the name of God discloses God’s essence or core or the very heart of his being. Jesus prayed that we might be put in touch with, in contact with, in relationship with, the very essence of God’s being by knowing his name. That contact is what will protect us. If we are in contact with the essential love and goodness that is at the very heart of God then that will fill our hearts, our emotions, our words, our actions enabling us to live in love with others, instead of living selfishly in opposition to others. Jesus prays that the essential love which is at the heart of God will transform us in our essence, meaning that we are then protected from evil by being filled with love.

The third aspect of Jesus’ prayer is to do with sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming holy. Jesus prays that we will be sanctified in truth, with the truth being the word of God. The Prologue to John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus himself is the Word of God. Therefore Jesus’ prays for us to become holy in Him. It is as we live in relationship to him, following in the Way that he has established, that we are sanctified. That is what it means for us to know Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is vital that we note that we are not sanctified by the Truth, meaning that sanctification is not about knowing and accepting truths that we are to believe. Instead, we are sanctified in the Truth, meaning that we are made holy as we inhabit, experience, practice and live out the Truth; with that truth being Jesus. 

Knowing God is, therefore, like diving ever deeper into a bottomless ocean where there is always more to see and encounter. We are within that ocean – the truth of relationship with Jesus – and can always see and uncover and discover more of the love of God because the reality of God is of an infinite depth of love. God created all things and therefore all things exist in him and he is more than the sum of all things, so it is impossible for us with our finite minds to ever fully know or understand his love. However profound our experience of God has been, there is always more for us to discover because we live in and are surrounded by infinitude of love. St Augustine is reported to have described this reality in terms of God being a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

It was in my ordination training that I discovered and experienced the reality of these things in a new way for myself. Through debate and discussion with others on my course I was able to re-examine my faith while also being held by the sense of unity that we quickly developed despite our differences. Those relationships have proved extremely strong and necessary as our ordained ministries have later been lived out. My fears about my personal inadequacy and the pressures there would be for my family were eased through a sense that we were on an unfolding journey of discovering God’s love which protects and sanctifies.

I moved from an understanding of God as being there for us – the one who fixes us and who fixes the world for us – to an understanding that we are in God – that in him we live and move and have our being. Because we are with God and in God and God in us, we can and will act in ways that are God-like and Godly. That happens not because we hold a particular set of beliefs or follow a particular set of rules, instead it happens because we are so immersed in God and in his love that his love necessarily overflows from us in ways that we cannot always anticipate or control. Essentially, we learn to improvise as Jesus did, because we are immersed in his ways and his love. Jesus prays constantly for a continual and continuing immersion in relationship with Him so that we will experience unity by sharing love, protection by experiencing the essence of God and holiness through living in Him. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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The Call - Everywhere I Go.

Look how they love one another

Here's the sermon I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

“They love every one, but are persecuted by all … Their names are blackened and yet they are cleared. They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life.”

That is how Christians were described in the Letter to Diognetus which may have been written in the second century. Tertullian, one of the leaders in the early Church, in his 2nd century defense of Christians remarks how Christian love attracted pagan notice: "What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. 'Only look' they say, 'look how they love one another'" (Apology 39).

This is what Jesus anticipated when he prayed that his disciples would be completely one in order that the world may know that he was sent by God the Father and they are loved by the Father just as Jesus is loved by the Father (John 17.18-23). As Lesslie Newbigin has written “this manifest unity in the one name will challenge the world to recognise that the name of Jesus is not the name of “one of the prophets” but the name of the one sent by the Father to whom all that belongs to the Father has been given.” The sign to the world that Jesus is who he claimed to be is to be, and has actually been at times in the past, the love and unity of the Church.

Therefore, whenever there is a lack of unity in the Church it deeply grieves God and has a profound effect on the Church’s ability to witness to the truth of Jesus. It also reveals the extent to which we have not fully understood or received the love of the Father and the Son. Jesus’ prayer is that the love which the Father has for the Son will also be in his disciples. It is as we know that love in our lives that we are able to love and be united with the wider Church. The Church is based not on our natural liking of each other instead the Church is based on our being caught up into the love relationship that exists between Father and Son and knowing both ourselves and each other to be loved in precisely the same way.

Richard Burridge has written that, “such unity is rooted in the life of God: ‘as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.’ Jesus answered Philip’s desire to see the Father with ‘I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ This unity between the Father and the Son is to be shared through the indwelling of the Spirit with all who love him. Thus the command to ‘love one another’ is ‘new’, because it is no mere moral exhortation, but a sharing in the life of God, ‘as I have loved you’.

Stephen Verney has called this love relationship between the Father and the Son, the dance of love. He describes it like this: “The Son can do nothing of himself”, [Jesus] says, “but only what he sees the Father doing” … He looks, and what he sees the Father doing, that he does; he listens, and what he hears the Father saying, that he says. The other side of the equation – of the choreography – is the generosity of the Father. “The Father loves the Son, and reveals to him everything which he is doing”, and furthermore, he gives him authority to do “out of himself” all that the Father does, and can never cease to do because it flows “out of himself”. In that dance of love between them, says Jesus, “I and the Father are one.” The Son cries “Abba! Father!” and the Father cries “my beloved Son”, and the love which leaps between them is Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God, God himself, for God is Spirit and God is Love.”

We become part of the love relationship when we become Christians as Burridge reminded us; to love one another is no mere moral exhortation but a sharing in the life of God. So today we need to ask ourselves to what extent are we participating in the love that exists between God the Father and God the Son? If we are, then both our words and actions towards our fellow Christians will be words and actions of love leading to unity? If we are not, then the reverse will be true.

“Jesus brings together the unity he has with the Father and the love of the disciples for one another – but it is not just to generate warm feelings of togetherness. The purpose is for the continuing mission, ‘that the world may believe that you have sent me’.” The world, Burridge writes, does not naturally ponder the internal relationships of the Holy Trinity, but when it sees Christians living this self-sacrificial love then it is challenged to think again. As were the writer of the Letter to Diognetus and those of whom Tertullian wrote:

“They love every one, but are persecuted by all … Their names are blackened and yet they are cleared. They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life.”

"What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. 'Only look' they say, 'look how they love one another'".

May it be so for us. Amen.

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Blessid Union of Souls - I Believe.

Amazing grace, extravagent love and intimate communion

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning for Trinity Sunday at St Catherine's Wickford:

“The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” It is common practise in church meetings for those present to close the meeting by saying the grace out loud, and to each other. “We say those words so often, at the end of meetings – sometimes with head bowed low and sometimes looking round at each other so we can speak them directly to each other. They are so familiar to us that we could easily forget they come from the Bible.” (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/)

John Wesley wrote of this prayer, “Let us study it more and more, that we may value it proportionably; that we may either deliver or receive it with a becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.” (https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/famous_prayers/may_the_grace.html) I would like us to do what John Wesley commends and study the Grace more and more this morning, doing so on the basis of a combination of some translations of the passage. So, I’d like us to reflect together on the amazing grace of Jesus, the extravagant love of God, and the intimate communion of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s begin by thinking about where this prayer comes from. “It comes right at the end of a letter, or letters probably, that Paul wrote to a church he founded, but a church that had turned on him.” “It’s great that we have Paul’s collection of letters to the church at Corinth in the Bible if only because it reminds us that there never was a golden age when it was easy to be part of the church. This church argued, split, coped with scandal, economic division, with the charismatics versus the conservatives – all of which shows that there’s nothing much new under the sun. It’s clear when you read between the lines that Paul had been getting the first century equivalent of on-line abuse, that this church that he had set up had been getting at him for being too poor, too scruffy, for working with his hands, for not having the right qualifications.” He’s under attack and has to defend himself but, “at the end of this long, passionate, sometimes weary and difficult correspondence”, he “writes these simple and ageless words, ‘The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.’”

“Maybe Paul composed [this prayer] and maybe he didn’t – maybe his churches used this blessing already and it was a phrase already known to them – but it’s an astonishing thought – that Christians through centuries and in many places have blessed each other with these same words. Reading them at the end of Paul’s letters gives them an added edge. These are not just pious, empty, words. He is saying them to people who have criticised him, hated him, attacked him, and abused him. He is wishing the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, upon those who cast him as an enemy. He says, in a way, it doesn’t matter what you say about me or what you think of me. Your abuse and attack isn’t going to make me anything different from the person I am determined to be; a person shaped by God’s grace, living God’s love, seeking fellowship, friendship, community with anyone.”

The effect of the Grace here is “to offer us the full resources of the faith”: “When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he and they were both aware that they were doing and enduring some pretty terrible things. But Paul told them that God wanted to give them the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That is what God wants to do with all of us – to bless us with the gifts of the beautiful Trinity and to show us what human life – touched by such blessing – could really be like.” (https://tauntonurc.org.uk/grace-for-trinity/)

So, let’s look briefly at the individual parts of this prayer, beginning with amazing grace. U2’s song called ‘Grace’ defines the amazing grace of Jesus as follows: Grace “takes the blame”, “covers the shame” and “removes the stain”. “What once was hurt / What once was friction / What left a mark / No longer stings / Because Grace makes beauty / Out of ugly things / Grace finds beauty / In everything / Grace finds goodness in everything.” (https://www.u2.com/lyrics/53)

Jesus himself told a story about a son who squandered his father's inheritance (the parable of the prodigal son). When the son returns, rather than rejecting or disciplining him, the father runs to greet him and celebrates his return. That story gives us an insight into the kind of love that God gives. Grace is the unmerited favour of God which finds goodness in everything. We do not deserve the love and goodness that is freely and unconditionally given from heaven and all we can or need do is receive it. That is truly amazing grace.

When we understand grace in this way, we can see why God’s love is described as extravagant. There is no holding back in the economy of God’s love, instead there is an overwhelming generosity which involves self-emptying. St Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians that Jesus “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” There was no holding back when it came to Jesus sharing God’s love with us, not even the withholding of his own life.

The currency of the kingdom of God is of abundant generosity of things that never run out. “The secret of happiness is learning to love the things God gives us in plenty. There’s no global shortage of friendship, kindness, generosity, sympathy, creativity, faithfulness, laughter, love. These are the currency of abundance.

The Church of today needs to rediscover this teaching because God gives us the abundance of the kingdom to renew the poverty of the church. In our generation God has given his Church a financial crisis, and this can only be for one reason: to teach us that abundance does not lie in financial security, and to show us that only in relationships of mutual interdependence, relationships that money obscures as often as it enables, does abundant life lie.”

As John McKnight and Peter Block have noted in their book ‘The Abundant Community’, that we live in a consumer society which is an economy of scarcity because it “constantly tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside of our immediate community.” Instead, they argue that “we can do unbelievable things by starting with our assets, not our deficits. We all have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. Using our particular assets (our skills, experience, insights and ideas) we have the God-given power to create a hope-filled life and can be the architects of the future where we want to live.” Finding ways to thrive in our churches and communities by releasing the gifts of all and building on one another’s assets is a sign of the extravagant love of God.

Finally, we come to the intimate communion of the Holy Spirit. Sam Wells and Abigail Kocher have noted “the subtlety of the word ‘communion’: com means with and union means in – we are at the same time with God and in God, which combines our two heavenly aspirations.” (https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/keeping-the-feast/)

In communion God takes our lives into the Godhead, the Trinity, and blesses us. In a Communion Service that happens particularly when the bread and wine and money and prayers are brought to the altar: “In that moment we each bring our different qualities, resources, hopes and dreams to God. And then the pastor recalls the sacred story of how God took what we are and made it what he is. And in that transformation we each receive back the same. What this is depicting is a new society in which we each bring our differentness to God but we each receive back from God the same bread of life. We each have different hungers, but God satisfies them all.

And in this dynamic of transformation we see how salvation works. God takes a simple people and their simple offerings and gives them a sacred story and sacred actions and in the regular telling of that story and performance of those actions they are transformed into God’s holy people. And that’s exactly what the regular celebration of the Eucharist is about: God taking an ordinary people and through this story and these actions turning them into the body of Christ, God’s companions forever.” (https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/sermons/Sept20TeachingEucharist-1.pdf)

As we have been exploring grace, love and communion, notice that the Son, the Father and Holy Spirit are all involved all the time. It’s not that Jesus is the only expression of grace or the Father, the only expression off love. All three are one, so they are all involved in showing and sharing grace, love and communion. We are drawn in to the relationship of love at the heart of the Godhead where grace, love and communion are constantly being shared and exchanged between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is out of this relationship of love that Jesus comes into our world to be with us and thereby open up a way for us to participate in the relationship of love that is constantly being shared between Father, Son and Spirit.

So, this wonderful prayer - “The grace of the lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” – is not simply for the ending of meetings but for the whole of life and the whole of eternity. It is what Christianity is all about. It is a description of the Trinity and the love that exists at the heart of all things because it exists at the heart of God. And it is an invitation for us to become part of that love and participate in it. So, let us, as John Wesley commends, “receive it with a becoming reverence, with eyes and hearts lifted up to God.”

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Michael Kiwanuka - I'm Getting Ready.

Travelling Well Together

Here's my sermon from this morning's joint service at St Mary's Runwell:

There's a very old joke about a child in Sunday School. A Sunday-school teacher asks the class of young children, "What is little and gray, eats nuts, and has a big bushy tail?" After a moment one child replies, "I know the answer's probably supposed to be Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."

Talking recently with our youth discussion group about the Bible, we were saying essentially that, that Jesus is both the way in to the Bible and what the Bible is all about. It's all about Jesus, as the Sunday school child had grasped.

That's what we get here in these parables from Jesus (John 10. 1-10). Jesus is both the gate to the sheep fold and the shepherd who brings the sheep in and out. It's all about Jesus, whether it's about beginning the Christian life as we join the flock and enter the fold or living the Christian life, as we go in and out of the sheep fold with Jesus in order to find pasture.

These parables give us picture of a part of the Christian life; that part that is about being together as a flock, receiving sustenance during the day when we are away from the fold and protection during the night when we are in the fold.

It's all about Jesus because he is the one who leads us to sustenance and who protects us with his body from evil. It's all about Jesus because Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the way we can come to see what God is actually like and feed on him by becoming like him, as well as the one who, by laying down his own life, enables us to find forgiveness and freedom from sin.

The point, in these parables, is that we travel well together; that we remain together and that we travel in and out of the sheep fold together.

Bishop Guli, the Bishop of Chelmsford, spent time at the beginning of her ministry in the Diocese travelling around the Diocese listening to people in it. As a result of her listening exercise, we have a document called Travelling Well Together, a document that is being given out today and also on Sunday 21st May, the day of our APCM, as it, as its title indicates, suggests ways or values for travelling well together as churches, parishes, a diocese, and as the pilgrim people of God.

The values are: Awareness of grace – as God always provides the resources required for the mission of the church to continue; Valuing the small, the vulnerable and the marginal - our calling is not to strain after worldly success, influence and power but to be a faithful and gentle presence and trust that God will use our efforts in ways we may never fully understand; Focusing outward - always called to look to the needs of those beyond the Church; Sustaining healthy rhythms - invited to live life in all its fulness; Kindness, mutual respect, gentleness and humility - virtues which are often underestimated and undervalued; Generously collaborative – a willingness to work well with others in a spirit of open honesty and transparency; Faithful, creative, courageous and open to the unexpected and surprising – faithful to the traditions we have received, whilst at the same time being open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit who continues to lead us into all truth. These are values that are all about Jesus, as he provides the template as well as the means for coming together, staying together and travelling well together.

We need to be focused on Jesus and on shared values at this time as we approach the APCM and the point that I have been with you for a year. We can look back on a year of development, a year in which seeds have been sown, some of which have already sprouted.

Our connections to the communities of Wickford and Runwell have grown, our profile in the wider community has developed, new initiatives like Unveiled, Quiet Days and the Parent and Toddler Group have helped in bringing that about. Some new people have joined, our youth discussion group has begun and we are preparing to run enquirers courses and wellbeing groups.

So, there are encouragements, but we are also at a critical time, a time when, rather than staying together and travelling well together, we could begin to pull apart and allow our differences as people and churches to pull us apart. The reality is that there are differences as well as commonalities in the way that we are as churches in our team and if we focus on the differences - one does this, while the other does that, or one has this, while the other has that - then we will pull in different directions and will pull ourselves apart.

The answer to it is to look to Jesus, rather than at ourselves. In Jesus, we see how God is one, although three; how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each different persons with different roles, yet are constantly communicating with one another, constantly sharing love, and therefore constantly communicating and sharing love with us too.

The values that are shared in Travelling Well Together are the values of Jesus, which are the values of the Trinity, of God. They are what we need in order to be together as a flock, to travel in and out of the sheep fold together to find sustenance and to be protected.

To be in that place and to travel in that way is to look at Jesus, rather than ourselves, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, rather than going our own way, and to feed on Jesus, rather than finding our own sustenance. It's all about Jesus, as the Sunday School child had come to realise. If we want to travel well together as a team and a parish, then we need to do the same, and reading and absorbing the values in this document will help us do that together. Amen.

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Cat Stevens - Peace Train.